At a weekend fire arms training course this weekend. Not necessarily to buy a gun, but more for target shooting at the local gun range.
Five years ago, I wouldn’t even consider it. I don’t shoot enough, not a hunter and didn’t have the cash to (guns and ammo are $$$$).
Why?
Cough Trump’s Threats To My Home and Native Land Cough.
Not that I expect to be a middle aged Wolverine, but it is a handy life skill to have. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Kinda like driving a manual aka stick. Or knowing how to start a fire in the woods. Even something as mundane as sorting laundry.
What skills do you think everyone should know?
Otherwise open thread/threat!
Love the choice of that idiot couple from St Louis for your image here.
Thanks. I picked them because it’s funny and opposite of what we have here where we have to take a firearms safety course to even get a sniff at a firearms license. What Lawyer Dipshit did would be an automatic fail.
2nd Amendment doesn’t mean being stupid with death sticks but try telling that to the NRA…. And many gun nuts.
If you live in an area where most people have cars, the absolute basic knowledge everyone should have includes:
how to check tire pressure
how to refill tires with low pressure
how to find and fill windshield wiper fluid, antifreeze, and oil
It’s not an ideal situation if you get a low oil or antifreeze sensor going off, since decent chance there’s a leak. But a quick refill might mean the difference between getting home safely and blowing up your engine.
I can do everything except oil. My dad used to shit on me for not knowing, but the last time he changed his oil he had a very hard time trying to find a place to recycle it (cheaply.)
But anything basic automotive is necessary.
Yeah I don’t know how to actually change my oil, but I can top off the reservoir if the low light came on.
In the case of the universe laughing at me today, I did some errands after commenting this and the low tire pressure light came on and I had to go add air to one of my tires.
How to read traffic signs, how ride a bike and how to swim.
Heh, not where I live… myo can attest to that.
The bike riding and how to swim, for sure.
Trump Ruins everything part MMCMMCXXXII
Knicks Gotta Knicks part 10,000,000,002
i did mine recently. my PAL is in the mail.
basic first aid is a skill i think every one should have…im getting a refresher course next week at work…its a useful skill to have…and at work i need it…coz im not legally allowed to work unless theres a first aider present…
course…most of the time i work alone…and me being the first aider for me…is definitely bending the rules… but if it works it works..
only downside is that over here… im now legally required to render aid if i see anyone in need of it ….and in the case of dipshits crashing their bikes coz they are on the phone…im more inclined to point and laugh as i keep walking
…hmm…given the role money has as both the source of the numbers for the part that means probably we have to add a grounding in statistics that includes some stuff about how the analysis thereof operates…& as a medium of exchange that confers value which can thus have a confusing tendency to imply relative worth of apples to oranges…I guess math is unavoidable…but also maybe you don’t need to get into the distinction between pure & applied unless you want to get to say you can build stuff other people need to know has good odds of not falling down while they’re in it
…these days…I’d probably vote for some stuff about logical & rhetorical fallacies to make them as identifiable-even-in-silhouette as german planes were in the blitz once someone made that into a correspondence course with teaching aids it was hard not to run into…just…generally the idea that checking answers is a good habit…whether they happen to be your answers or someone else’s
…&…I have a soft spot for the probably-hopelessly-naïve notion that if people had more respect for…variously…themselves…thinking…the things they say…the things they hear…& the differences in the combinations & permutations thereof depending on stuff like mood & context & tone & all manner of shit you can’t in any practical way go about trying to keep presently in mind on some sort of constant basis so it might help to bid for consistent instead…which…doesn’t happen on its own?
…mind you…nature/nuture is a right bugger…& I went to a series of schools where, in fact, though I have never owned my own…I spent time on ranges & shot various things & learned how to clean most of those…&…also spent time on enough farms to get familiar with shotguns & various sorts of machinery that will maim you if you get sloppy…& was mostly more scared of the latter than the former even if I mostly only did much hands-on with the machines for the most part…& in the overlap…used a few things more by way of the stuff the school had me point at paper to…well…make dinner happen sometimes
…iirc…none of that actually required me personally to acquire a firearms license…& was all perfectly legal…it was mostly before stuff like dunblaine happened so it might be different in some ways now…but the owner of the firearm was the one that needed a license…I think the logic was they had responsibility/liability for said firearm…so you could give that to a kid & tell them what to do with it & the kid & you aren’t breaking any laws…but you let the kid wander off in the woods with the thing without you & anything that goes wrong is your fault…kinda thing
…&…maybe this is nonsense…but…I’m not sure I wouldn’t follow up on making some equivalent of the “never ever let a gun pointed be at anyone” rhyme a thing everyone knew by…5-10 years old…&…maybe by 15…before the ones that went in the first place drop out in numbers, I guess…everyone had to plink at some paper targets & see how much you want those ear defenders on if you aren’t watching that happen on a screen
…hell…maybe make people do some stuff they take for granted…build a wall that won’t fall over that’s got a 90° corner & a foundation with a level floor
…or…hell…just how to put groceries in a bag without fucking those up?
Hunting & shooting is okay. But if we’re ever gonna survive the Zombie Apocalypse (or Trumpty-Dumpty sending us into Nuclear Winter!), we also need some *other* survival skills, like being able to forage, fish, and track that game, too!
Finding safe water & knowing how to set up a spring house is handy, too.
And as a Gen-Xer, i *gotta* say “Knowing how to *not* sink in Quicksand” was a skill that most of us *thought* you needed to know as kids!